What do reporters keep on their desks?

Hollywood can't hack it when film-makers portray newspaper offices. According to a San Francisco Chronicle writer, editorial floors are always too tidy in movies and TV shows because directors and production designers cannot seem to re-create the gravity-defying clutter that fills the usual editorial floor.

He points to books crammed on shelves, and desks that "dot the newsroom like little islands of compost. Then he claims that the typical US journalist's work area will include at least three of the following:

* One dead plant, partially covered by a pile of used reporter's notebooks

* A bunch of stuff the ergonomics consultant dropped off two years ago, in an unopened pile

* Several posters of baseball/ football players

* A movie poster that was an inside joke between two other staff members, both of whom quit or retired at least seven years ago

Surely British journalists have much more interesting stuff on their desks, don't they?